Arnold
M. Silver
From
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Arnold
M. Silver was a senior CIA operations officer. A Boston native, he died of
multiple myeloma on December 16, 1993 in the age of 74 at his home in Luxembourg
City. During his years of service he worked in Austria, Luxembourg, Germany,
Turkey and the US.
Biography
Silver
graduated at Tufts University and received a master's degree in
German philology from Harvard University in 1942. During the second
world war he participated in the Normandy landings and later became a
prisoner-of-war interrogator (IPW), first in the IPW team of the 66th
Infantry Division. In September 1945 he joined the IPW team in Oberursel,
near Frankfurt-am-Main, at the 7707th European Intelligence Center, also
referred to as Camp King. "Oberursel", as the camp was most
frequently called, became the Army's center for detailed interrogation of
former Nazi military personnel, émigré personalities and potential Sovjet
informants.
Many of
the Paperclip scientists were recruited there and it was Silver's
task to interrogate persons such as Otto Skorzeny, Walter
Schellenberg and Richard Kauder (alias Klatt).
After
Skorzeny was acquitted of war crimes by a military court in Dachau in 1946, he
was sent to Oberursel until a decision would be made what to do with him. After
several interrogations by Silver, it was decided that he resettled to Spain:
G-2 and
USFET (US Forces, European Theater) in Frankfurt concurred in my recommendation
that he be resettled there. He became a rather successful entrepreneur in
Madrid, but for years afterwards - I think I last heard about him in 1961 - he
approached each succeeding US Air Force attaché in Madrid with an offer to
build a network of agents in the USSR for the United States. What surprised me
(or did it?) was the fact that each succeeding Air Force attaché recommened [sic]
to the Pentagon that Skorzeny be taken up on his offer, although there was not
the slightest shred of evidence that he had the capability of the know-how to
implement his proposal. The Pentagon rejected each of the recommendations from
Madrid.[1]
About
his time at Oberursel, Silver writes:
As a
result of their interrogations of defectors from the Soviet and East European
intelligence services, as well as arrested agents of these services, the
interrogators in the counterintelligence section of Oberursel became experts on
the services, especially the Soviet state security service (MGB at the time,
then KGB) ad, to a much lesser extent, the Soviet Military intelligence Service
(GRU).[2]
In 1948,
he retired from the Army as a technical sergeant and joined the CIA, founded
one year before. Silver became CIA Chief of Station in Luxembourg from
1957-1960.
Retirement
He
retired from the CIA in 1978 and settled in Luxembourg, but continued
publishing articles on European and Soviet affairs in newspapers such as the
Wall Street Journal and the Herald Tribune.[3]
He died
on December 16, 1993, of multiple myeloma at his home in Luxembourg City. He
was survived by this wife, the former Annemarie Rassbach.
References
Arnold
M. Silver, Memories
of Oberursel - Questions, Questions, Questions (Intelligence &
National Security, Vol.8, Nr.2, April 1993)
Arnold
M. Silver, Memories
of Oberursel - Questions, Questions, Questions (Intelligence &
National Security, Vol.8, Nr.2, April 1993)
Arnold
M. Silver'. Washington Post, 19 Dec 1993
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